Colonial America, or America's Medieval Period

Trevor Burnard, in a piece on the importance of geography over time for historians of Colonial America explains why this is so:

Why are early Americanists so obsessed with region—with geography, in short—rather than with chronology? Why is early America generally organized by space rather than time, at least until the Revolution comes along? In part, of course, the reason for such fixation upon space is because the colonial period is the very important prologue to the main event, which is the formation of the nation state and of United States history proper. The colonial period is thus the medieval section of American history.

Interesting. And it might explain why, as an Americanist, I'm mostly attracted to the Colonial and Revolutionary eras in addition to my "minor" of early Medieval History. Must be that beginnings/transitions appeal to me.

Medieval Shark Week

What is it about sharks? Welp, whatever, but Jeff Sypek at "Quid Plura" has decided to host "Medieval Shark Week". My favorite "entry":

Medieval Shark Week is about fun!

If you’re a gamer, you’ll want to play TIMESHARK II: Medieval Shark Strike Force, in which you become a time-traveling shark transported back to medieval Germany to feast on clones of Adolf Hitler....

Download the game for Mac or PC here. You’ll find instructions on the second page of this thread, where the game’s author reveals that TIMESHARK is an acronym for “Time-travelling Intimidation and Mastication Expert: Sharks Have Ample Reason to Kill.”

Cool.

Review: Tosh's "Historians on History" and "Pursuit of History"

The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (3rd Edition) and Historians on History: An Anthology by John Tosh

Early in The Pursuit of History, Tosh explains that "[h]ow the past is known and how it is applied to present need are open to widely varying approaches." Pursuit is a solid effort by Tosh to trace the origins of historical study and the methodologies that have evolved over time. He explains the difference between popular history and academic history and describes the importance of the latter.

The first half of Pursuit is dedicated to showing how historians should properly do their work, including how to find and use sources as well as how to write and interpret historical findings. All are well covered. The second half of the book is much more philosophical in tone. Tosh tackles a number of questions relating to objectivity, true knowledge and the reliability of so-called facts.

Simply put, he describes the battle between those who believe history is a cumulative discipline and those who view it as a relative and interpretive exercise as well as all of those with positions in between. Most importantly, he defends the discipline's viability and importance against those who attack it, including the postmodernists (though he doesn't dismiss all of the postmodernist contributions to the field). His notes and references are plentiful and he is fair with each of the "schools" of history.

Historians on History grew as an outgrowth of Pursuit and is essentially primary source material for the aforementioned work. It is comprised of excerpts from historiographical works on the field of history with brief input from Tosh. He lays the foundation for the book by describing the traditional reasons for studying history as well as the innovations and dialectic debates of the past 30 years.

He introduces each section with a brief biography of the author from whose work he has excerpted as well as an explanation of the particular historical philosophy which will be covered in that section. He then steps back and allows historians to illustrate their thoughts on a particular methodology or philosophy.

Not all sections are filled with works championing a certain method. For instance, the sections on Social Sciences and Postmodernism each contain relatively spirited articles defending or attacking these methods and Tosh doesn't interfere as he allows the reader to make up his own mind.

Tosh ends his compilation with a defense of the field of historical study. Tosh's writing is relatively clear and concise, though the same cannot be said for some of the excerpted writings. Though not always an enjoyable read, Historians on History is still a valuable work as it illuminates the thought processes of some of the field's finest minds.

Review: Simplexity

Jeffrey Kluger: Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)

What, or who, is more effective at guessing the needs of a particular book-buyer? Amazon with its buildings of servers and aggregation of data based on demographics and past purchasing patterns? Or a small book, traditional book store with a knowledgeable trained at picking up the little cues that allow them to anticipate a customers needs? And which is more complex; or simple? Neither or both? How we can try to determine the answers to these questions and many others stretching from topics as diverse as how humans react in crisis to why bad sports teams beat better ones is the task Jeffrey Kluger sets out to explain in Simplexity.

Throughout his search, he returns to the researchers of the Sante Fe Institute, quite literally a think tank, which was founded by Nobel Prize (physics) winner Murray Gell-Mann. But the "complexity scientists" and scholars at SFI are engaged in all sorts of thought, including various experiments and studies. All to try to better understand why things work the way they do.

Complexity scientists like to talk about the ideas of pure chaos and pure robustness--and both are exceedingly simple things. An empty room pumped full of air molecules may not be a particularly interesting place, but it is an extraordinary active one, with the molecules swirling in all directions at once, dispersing chaotically to every possible crack and corner. On the other hand, a lump of carbon chilled to what scientists call absolute zero--or the point at which molecular motion is the slowest it can possibly be--is neither interesting nor active. The carbon is exceedingly static, or robust, as complexity researchers call it; the room is exceedingly chaotic. What neither of them is, however, is complex, offering only spinning disorder at one end and flash frozen order at the other.

Where you'd fine real complexity would be somewhere between these two states, the point at which the molecules begin to climb from disorder, sorting themselves into something interesting and organized...but catching themselves before they descend down the other side of the complexity hill, sliding into something lumpish and fixed. (p.27-9)

This is the so-called "Complexity Arc" and Kluger refers to it again and again as helpful tool in helping to analyze various topics. Using this tool, the stock market appears relatively simple; it usually finds itself in chaos or remarkably stable, very rarely in between. But the models are deceiving, and markets are affected by Adam Smith's "invisible hand" guided by "invisible brains," as Kluger puts it.

Capitalism functions reasonably well and communism flopped so badly because one system includes human needs, motivations, and occasional wisdom in its equations and the other stripped them out. Many complexity theorists studying stock trades argue that collective human brainpower is an underestimated thing, and the more minds you put to work in a market, the better you're all likely to do.

Here, Kluger turns to Brown University's Brook Harrington, who gives the jellybeans-in-a-jar guessing game as an example and boils it down: "It's the old story of the wisdom of the crowds." Using this as a guide, Harrington has shown that, time after time, investment clubs are more successful than individuals in earning money off of stock investments.

Kluger also explains that investors can also act in a moral way. If they don't like what a company has done--an oil spill, doing business with dictators, Enron--they may not favor them as much as earnings or potential would otherwise indicate. Traders are like most people and have an inherent desire to take part in a "fair deal." Kluger's illustration of this principle is eye-opening: if given the opportunity to get a share of $100, most people will reject anything too far away from a 50/50 split. For instance, they'd reject $20 if that meant the other person would get $80. Better nothing than letting someone else get more.

Ahh. Human nature.

It is the variable that most vexes complexity scientists and one they are vigorously seeking to study and quantify and qualify. A hopeless quest? Perhaps, but the little bits of data learned along the way have helped engineers and planners and others design better products, make safer buildings and, yes, decide if baseball or football are the more complex sport. You'll have to read the book to find out.

Some of the other examples Kluger provides are wondrous, such as how a simple fungus in Indonesia helped prop-up a dictator. Others are frustrating, as he explains that it's difficult to get people--and the groups they form--to change their minds. It's true of bureaucracies and armies and political parties or ideologies. Through it all, Kluger does an excellent job of explaining how seemingly complicated things aren't as well as the opposite. He takes complex matters and makes them simple to understand in a very entertaining and engaging way. In short, this is a really cool book!

Review: The Coming China Wars

Peter Navarro, The Coming China Wars: Where They Will be Fought, How The Can Be Won.

The purpose of this book is to warn that unless strong actions are taken now both by China and the rest of the world, The Coming China Wars are destined to be fought over everything from decent jobs, livable wages, and leading-edge technologies to strategic resources such as oil, copper, and steel, and eventually to our most basic of all needs--bread, water, and air.

To achieve his purpose, Navarro explains and examines how various Chinese policies affect its people and government and those of the rest of the world. For example, the book is replete with examples of how China's government has set-up uneven economic playing fields domestically and globally through currency manipulation, protectionism, worker mistreatment, lax regulation--if any at all--and ignoring product piracy within its borders (80% of pirate products seized at U.S. borders come from China). Such practices have fueled China's economic growth at an unsustainable pace, according to Navarro. Throw in a growing appetite for natural resources, both its own and those of other countries, and China is a ravenous beast not easily sated. Its economic needs affect its judgment as the pressure to maintain the rate of economic growth encourages the maintenance of the same unfair and immoral practices.

Given the way China operates within its own borders, it is no surprise to learn that it makes no moral ties to its economic needs abroad; looking the other way when dealing with dictators in Africa or Iran or North Korea for natural resources in exchange for weapons or help with infrastructure, which in turn helps China extract the aforementioned resources. Environmental issues are also not high on their list of priorities. 18 of the 20 smoggiest cities are in China and that so-called "chog" finds its way into the air of its Asian neighbors and the West Coast of North America. Then there is the disastrous treatment of the Chinese waterways: the Yellow River is often also blue, green or red; the three Gorges Damn is proving to be an environmental and health disaster. One wonders if the coverage of the upcoming Beijing Olympics will reveal such things for the world to see.

Their willingness to take environmental short-cuts buys them economic growth because such a lax atmosphere proves too tempting to foreign companies. Here, Navarro makes an important historical point:

There is both a danger and a paradox here that should not be lost on any student of Chinese history aware of the "foreign humiliation" that China was subjected to in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The danger is that these powerful foreign economic interests are overpowering the political will of the central government, thereby rendering it impossible for China to get a handle on its own pollution problems. The paradox is that as China's Communist Party seeks to mold the country into a superpower, it is quickly losing control of its own destiny to powerful foreign economic interests.

Thus do foreign companies and countries (and their consumers) prop up Chinese economic practices. However, Navarro does suggest that such a climate is causing worker unrest upset over unpaid wages, revoked or reduced pensions and poor health. Then again, the Chinese government has also engaged in repression (Falun Gong, Tibet, Uighur), often with the implicit help of foreign companies (Yahoo! is singled out). This belligerence is also turning outward as China is amidst a dramatic military buildup with the apparent goal of power projection around the world and even into outer space. (An aside: this was the first time I'd heard that the moon may have rich deposits of Helium 3, a rare isotope that scientists believe could help with nuclear fusion.)

So what should we do about all of this? Navarro's concluding chapter offers some suggestions to both governments and to we the people. Focusing on his prescriptions for the individual, Navarro explains that we haven't really, truly been paying attention because of "the narcotic effect that cheap Chinese goods have had on us" or we've been more worried about the Middle East. Or, perhaps most importantly, there "is a general lack of awareness of the far-ranging implications of a world increasingly 'Made in China.'" As to this last, The Coming China Wars is a quick and succinct way to get up to speed. Cheap goods are good for the American consumer, but not if they are produced on playing field tilted as dramatically as portrayed by Navarro.

The Baby-Mama Witches of Gloucester

The first thing I thought of when I read the story about the 17 wanna-be baby mamas of Gloucester, Massachusetts were the teenage girls who lay at the center of the Salem Witch Trials. No doubt, this was probably because of the proximity of Gloucester to Salem Village (now Danvers, Mass.). Now, I'm simply not well-versed enough in group psychology or the deeper history of the Salem Witch hysteria to draw any conclusions. I just found these parallels interesting (if they are indeed parallel!).

A little digging brought up some statistical similarities: there were 16 girls in Salem Village who claimed they were the victims of witchcraft, and most were teenagers; there are 17 new baby mama teenagers in Gloucester. Maybe both groups of girls were depressed by their surroundings, or at least picked up on the depression from their parents and community.

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum theorized in Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft that the Salem Village witchcraft accusations were a sort of psychological projection that exposed tensions between the agrarian and economically poor Salem Village and its more economically successful neighbor Salem Town. As Philip Greven, Jr. wrote in his review of Salem Possessed (Reviews in American History, Vol.2, No.4, 1974; p.516):

Throughout their book, the underlying assumption which shapes their analysis of the Village and its inhabitants is that this community reflects a particular transitional point in a long-term historical process which was transforming precapitalist agrarian society into more urban, commercial, and capitalistic society. As they observe of [Reverend Samuel] Parriss and the Village, "All the elements of their respective histories were deeply rooted in the social realities of late seventeenth century western culture--a culture in which a subsistence, peasant-based economy was being subverted by mercantile capitalism" (p. 178).

The Time piece on the Gloucester 17 noted:

The past decade has been difficult for this mostly white, mostly blue-collar city (pop. 30,000). In Gloucester, perched on scenic Cape Ann, the economy has always depended on a strong fishing industry. But in recent years, such jobs have all but disappeared overseas, and with them much of the community's wherewithal. "Families are broken," says school superintendent Christopher Farmer. "Many of our young people are growing up directionless."

***
Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says.

Also, its apparent that both groups of teenage girls may have coordinated their actions. Although many believe that the Salem accusers were victims of mass hysteria, perhaps even chemically induced, there is also evidence that they were just "hav[ing] some sport."

Daniel Elliott: Deposition for Elizabeth Proctor

the testimony of Daniel elet aged 27 years or thear abouts who testifieth & saith that I being at the hous of leutennant ingasone one the 28 of march in the year 1692 thear being preasent one of the aflicted persons which cryed out and said thears goody procter William raiment juner being theare present told the garle he beleved she lyed for he saw nothing then goody ingerson told the garl she told aly for thear was nothing: then the garl said that she did it for sport they must have some sport

( Essex County Archives, Salem -- Witchcraft Vol. 1 Page 27 )

The Gloucester baby mamas consciously decided to get pregnant and raise their kids together.

By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," [school principal Joseph] Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

And once each group embarked on their respective escapades, they knew that adults were in place to provide, shall we say, support. In the case of the Salem girls, society was predisposed to attribute their actions to supernatural causes:

At the time, however, there was another theory to explain the girls' symptoms. Cotton Mather had recently published a popular book, "Memorable Providences," describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston, and Betty [Parriss]'s behavior in some ways mirrored that of the afflicted person described in Mather's widely read and discussed book. It was easy to believe in 1692 in Salem, with an Indian war raging less than seventy miles away (and many refugees from the war in the area) that the devil was close at hand. Sudden and violent death occupied minds.

Talk of witchcraft increased when other playmates of Betty, including eleven-year-old Ann Putnam, seventeen-year-old Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, began to exhibit similar unusual behavior. When his own nostrums failed to effect a cure, William Griggs, a doctor called to examine the girls, suggested that the girls' problems might have a supernatural origin. The widespread belief that witches targeted children made the doctor's diagnosis seem increasing likely.

***
Meanwhile, the number of girls afflicted continued to grow, rising to seven with the addition of Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren. According to historian Peter Hoffer, the girls "turned themselves from a circle of friends into a gang of juvenile delinquents." ( Many people of the period complained that young people lacked the piety and sense of purpose of the founders' generation.) The girls contorted into grotesque poses, fell down into frozen postures, and complained of biting and pinching sensations. In a village where everyone believed that the devil was real, close at hand, and acted in the real world, the suspected affliction of the girls became an obsession.

The Gloucester girls are surrounded by a support system of a different kind.

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.

But by May, after nurse practitioner Kim Daly had administered some 150 pregnancy tests at Gloucester High's student clinic, she and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, a local pediatrician, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives regardless of parental consent, a practice at about 15 public high schools in Massachusetts. Currently Gloucester teens must travel about 20 miles (30 km) to reach the nearest women's health clinic; younger girls have to get a ride or take the train and walk. But the notion of a school handing out birth control pills has met with hostility. Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children." The pair resigned in protest on May 30.

There are also other reports attempting to link the episode to celebrity culture, "abstinence only" education or a reduction in sex education classes in Massachusetts.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that teenage girls are probably the clique-iest species in the world. Perhaps all that can be concluded is that the phenomena of girls behaving badly is really nothing new: its easier to act out against social mores with your peers than by yourself. And there really is safety in numbers. If you are a teenage girl and you and a group of your friends cross the line, many adults--including your own parents--will trip all over themselves to find alternative explanations for your behavior. If you do something stupid all by yourself, then you, young lady, were just being an idiot. But if you are wise enough to get a group together to engage in unacceptable behavior, then the temptation is to shift the burden of responsibility from the individuals to the larger society.

US Navy To Raise Sunken Russian Sub

Providence, Rhode Island's sunken Russian submarine will finally be raised as part of a training exercise by the US Navy. The sub, which was used in a Harrison Ford movie and served as a floating museum on the Providence waterfront, has been underwater for a year after sinking during a storm. Unfortunately, it looks like its days as a museum may be over. The Providence Journal has details:

Next week, a team of Army and Navy salvage divers will pull the sunken Juliett 484 upright using heavy machinery. Once the sub is standing straight, they expect to raise it out of the water, probably on July 15.

While it’s a great training exercise for the military’s salvage divers, they may be among the last people who will ever set foot inside the Russian sub; its days as a museum boat are likely over, thanks to the rust and growth inside. They won’t know for sure until the submarine is refloated.

“If it’s in really bad shape, we have to be realistic, it’s been underwater for a year,” said Frank Lennon, president of the USS Saratoga Foundation, which operates the museum.

There’s still a chance the submarine could be restored, but that would likely be too expensive for the foundation. It’s possible that it could be beached somewhere, or that the military could have a hand in restoring it, but it’s equally likely it could end up as scrap, or sunken again to serve as an underwater reef.

One thing is certain: the Russian sub museum at Collier Point Park is a thing of the past. “That is not an option,” Lennon said.

New Nathaniel Greene Bio Coming Next Week

A new book by Rhode Island author Gerald Carbone, Nathanael Greene: A Biography of the American Revolution, may finally put one of America's finest generals into the spotlight. Historians of the American Revolution know that Nathanael Greene, son of a Rhode Island Quaker family, was the most successful general in the Continental Army. But, he has been overshadowed by a certain other General (you know, Father of the Country and all that) and his victories came in the South, which has always been kind of the sub-plot to the Northeast-centric narrative of the AmRev.

Review: Sin in the Second City

Karen Abbott, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul.

Minna and Ada Everleigh owned the preeminent brothel in turn-of-the century Chicago and entertained prize-fighters and princes during the decade plus tenure as proprietors of the eponymous Everleigh Club. World famous, the establishment catered to well-monied men of expensive tastes—a conscious decision on the part of the sisters—and engendered jealousy (from competitors) and anger (from reformers) as well as revenue (for the sisters and the politicians they bribed). Oh, and they have been credited with helping to proliferate a certain term for coitus, based upon a pun on their name.

Abbott exposes their invented backstory for what it was, though there is still plenty of murkiness about their past. What is known is that the ladies set up shop in Chicago and found instant success. But they didn’t do so blindly. They weren’t your average prospective madams; they knew the importance of market research and selected Chicago after a nationwide canvassing of various cities. It was a good choice and they prospered so long as they bribed the right politicians and deflected attention away when various incidences could have caused them trouble.

Yet, they also went into business at the same time that a nascent Progressive movement was growing, encompassing everything from banning cigarettes and alcohol to advocating against prostitution. Obvoiusly the Everleighs were concerned mostly with the last and Abbott intersperses her story about the business of running the Everleigh Club with snippets regarding the growing movement against white slavery, which quickly became a proxy for the fight against prostitution.

As the years went by, the reformers became more aggressive and even resorted to exaggeration or outright lies in an effort to shut down red light districts across the nation. The Everleighs avoided trouble and continued to reap the rewards for supplying their vice. Eventually, however, the wrong Mayor got elected and the wrong review committee suggested that Chicago clamp down on prostitution. And what better target than the high-profile Everleigh Club to set the example? The end was quick, and despite initially thinking they could re-establish themselves, the Everleigh’s eventually retired in anonymity to New York City, living out their days amongst the remnants of their wealth.

To be sure, Abbot’s sympathies are clearly with the sinners rather than the saints in this story. This leads to a tendency to gloss over—or leave unmentioned—some of the consequences of the Everleigh sisters actions. There can be little doubt that their support for local politicians via bribes helped to seed and strengthen organized crime. And regardless of whether or not they ran a high class establishment, the sisters contributed to the corruption of many a person. Abbott does try to be fair to the reformers, but they are clearly the antagonists in this tale.

Sin in the Second City is a hybrid work. Abbott combines her knowledge of the historical record--backed by extensive research--with her interpretation of the words and psychology of the several “characters” who make up her story. This is not historical fiction, but Abbot offers up a substantive amount of speculation—from quotes, to divining motivation or thoughts, to describing impossible to know physical actions—to dissuade one from calling this a work of straight history. But her research shows in the attention to detail and the overall result is a highly readable and interesting story that allows the reader to appreciate one version of this interesting era.

Medieval Mass Transit

I wonder if they were talking about this at K'Zoo:

With no end in sight to the rise in fuel prices, commuters in Albany are using a network of trebuchets to save on gas and the airlines are taking notice.

“We have a high-density of renaissance festival attendees, so it’s only natural that the trend started here,” said Clinton Decola who heads the Trebuchet Transport Cooperative of Albany (TTCA). “In medieval times the trebuchet was accurate, but with today’s technology we can make it even more accurate. People can launch themselves from house to house until they’re near enough their work to walk.”

The members of the TTCA operate over one hundred trebuchets and catapults around the Albany area. Members pay a small fee to maintain the trebuchets, then they can use the network to travel anywhere the trebuchets launch to.

Christian Rega uses the network to fling himself to work and back saving over $100 a week on gas. “I save money; I’m helping break America’s addiction to oil and defying death every day. It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Rega.

Kudo's to the Cliopats

'Spose "kudos" are in order to the Cliopats and their fellow travelers for the part they played in helping He Who Is Change gain the Democratic Party nomination. Me? I don't get the infatuation, but I've also not seen as effective a political cipher as mssr. Obama. Anyway, congrats to Ralph et al. For the rest of us, take note of the list of HfO historians, check it twice and keep it in mind thirty years on when the history of the Obama campaign/Presidency is written. There sure are a lot of candidates for court historian, no?

Review: Pennsylvania Avenue

John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib, Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, (New York, Random House, 2008).

Pennsylvania Avenue is the capital’s best address, the street of status, where the powerful work, and meet, and where the ambitious come to get things done….Over the span of American history, the powerful have come together here to accomplish great things—to free the oppressed, to win great battles, to launch great public works, to comfort the downtrodden. The people of Pennsylvania can be vain, greedy, downright nasty as well. Sometimes the Avenue is where they manage to stop things from getting done. Interspersed with the moments of great glory are those occasions when fear, mistrust, or simple disagreements run out of control to produce confrontation and gridlock on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Thus begins this compendium of Beltway Biographies compiled by Harwood and Seib. Various behind-the-scenes characters are profiled and one or two of their individual successes and failures in “getting things done” are highlighted.

Throughout, the authors try to illustrate—indeed, seem to yearn for—a time when relations between the parties were better. To be sure, while the politics of bygone eras saw their own tensions and fundamental differences, more often than not, most politicians of different stripes could at least agree on big picture issues such as the Cold War.

According to the authors, that changed—and they make their case in the sections on Ken Mehlman and a few, sprinkled allusions to Barack Obama—when the Baby Boom generation developed ideological fault lines during the Vietnam War. The differences that separated the factions born of that conflict exist to this day. In short, there is a basic distrust between the two main factions and both work to undermine the ideas of their opponent, no matter the cost.

To this basic explanation, they would also seem to add the significant role the modern mass media has played. This factor they highlight in their profile of Karl Rove, who also holds this view, and whose position is that a mass media explosion led to more outlets competing against each other. This provided incentive to produce compelling content. The subsequent emergence of the “talking head” format on television has only served to continually feed the partisan beasts. We talk past each other an awful lot these days.

There are also some good bits not related to the main thesis. The chapter on Elliot Abrams includes as fair and concise an explanation of the much maligned “neocons” as I've seen, for example. Abrams also explains that a Presidential speech is a major event because it “compels the administration to decide what it really believes.” Perhaps. Though I suspect more than one politician has delivered a major speech based more on what he thought the audience wanted to hear rather than what he really believes.

In summary, the authors are even-handed with their subjects, including fair and illuminating portrayals of some selected successes and failures enjoyed (or not) by these beltway insiders. It is a well-written and informative work that concisely describes how things get done. Yet, the authors' obvious desire for a kinder, gentler Washington sometimes seems overwrought. I don't believe I'm alone in being neither as optimistic, nor desirous, of a Washington, D.C. where everyone gets along and gets things done. Sometimes, the best thing that Washington can do is nothing, after all.

Is Feith's Book a Model for Future Scholarly Publishing?

Douglas Feith's War and Decision has been reviewed by National Review, The Wall Street Journal and NPR (h/t). Now, I know that--especially among academics--Feith is considered one of the neocon Sith Lords, but I think he's done something with his book that is, well, pretty neat. He's created a companion website to the book on which he provides links to the 600 documents he's cited in his work. How cool is that? Could this be a way for academics to publish serious and scholarly history and save money by putting their citations on the web? Don't know, but it seems to have potential to me.

Time Flies, and Baseball is Here

Wow, almost a month, huh? Well, since my beloved Sawx are back in action tonight against the Athletics, why not a shout out to the Library of Congress and their History of Baseball web site? It includes a section on baseball cards (before they became "investments"). Ahhh, that cardboard tasting gum. MMMM.

And "history of baseball" reminds me of Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine (where I grew up) who was the first recognized American Indian to play in the big leagues and was the supposed "inspiration" for the Cleveland Indians mascot and logo. (More on Sockalexis' historical importance and the controversy surrounding the Indian's here).

"I don't remember ever seeing a quicker bat or a stronger arm. Among the moderns, possibly one player worthy of comparison is that young man Joe DiMaggio. He has a trace of Sockalexis's stuff, but I don't believe he can run or throw with the Indian." - Red Sox Manager Bill Carrigan
{source}

Clinton's Shut Record Access Down

USA Today reports that "Archivists block release of Clinton papers":

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

That archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Clinton's legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.

The Clinton team is spinning it as being the decision of the archivists, and USA Today is pretty much following that line. But there is this:

In 2002, Clinton sent a guidance letter to his library that urged quick release of most White House records, but retained the confidentiality prerogative covering advice from his staff. Still, he said the restriction should be interpreted "narrowly" and allowed that certain records detailing internal communications could be made public if reviewed and approved for release by his designated legal agent.

Emily Robison, the library's deputy director, said Clinton's agent, former deputy White House counsel Bruce Lindsey, chose not to review the withheld documents.

Lindsey "was given the opportunity to look at what we withheld under the (president's) guidelines, and he chose not to.... Only Mr. Lindsey and the president have the authority to open those," she said.

The William J. Clinton Foundation, which Lindsey helps oversee, said in a written statement that the National Archives is responsible for deciding which records are withheld under the Presidential Records Act. Archivists were exclusively responsible for "determinations with respect to these materials," the statement said.

Basically, the archivists are being characteristically conservative about their interpretation of what should be made accessible and deferring to the process of allowing the Clinton team to review and OK the release. But the Clinton's are taking advantage by essentially "pocket vetoing" the release by refusing to review them while trying to put the onus (blame?) back on the National Archives (and George Bush). I'll be interested to see how the AHA and NCH address this latest development.

UPDATE: The NCH has an even-handed story, though a bit broader in scope, and it also mentions the USA Today story referenced above. Kudos.

History Carnival 62

Welcome to the 62nd History Carnival. It only seems like yesterday that I hosted History Carnival #10 (the Aluminum and Tin anniversary) back in 2005. It was easier when there weren't so many of us! Anyway, since I've just missed the Diamond anniversary (#60), no "ice" will be handed out by way of celebration. Instead, I'll offer my gratitude that we're all just happy we're still together after all these iterations.

OK, I've blabbed enough: I'm an engineer by trade, so allow me to dispense with the ruffles and flourishes and exhibit the utilitarianism commensurate with my avocation. (Who am I kidding? I've already over-engineered this intro all to hell).

To the task at hand....

History and Theory and other Building Blocks

We begin with a cautionary note: Nathanael Robinson (with an assist from Jonathan Dresner) reminds us that blogs are sources too. So when you get something from them, please be kind and acknowledge. That goes for all of you blog-newbies / jurassic history profs out there. We're watching.

In Presentism in the Service of Diversity? Chris Green discusses the notion of "medieval Islamic psychology." Ah yes, Al-Sigmunda Freud and Carl bin Jung....

Are we still working in Gibbon's shadow? Manan Ahmed takes on the historiography of the Imperial Decline Scenario.

Thomas Carlyle introduces his Western Intellectual History Lecture Series podcasts, Mercurius Politicus wants us to read about the history and historiography of the book and Jeremy Burman examines the difference between good scholarship in the history of science and the best historical science writing.

Philippe Watrelot (en français) says Nikolas Sarkozy's proposal that each 10 year old in France should memorize the biography of one French child deported during the Holocaust is clouding pedagogy with emotion. Ce n'est pas bon.

Phil Paine thinks historians haven't cast their theoretical nets far enough and have missed the role that fishing has played in history. The hook is baited and floating in the water, you gonna bite?

War

David Gross takes a look at war tax resistance during World War I, where resisters risked vigilante mob violence in trying to resist what was, nominally, a volunteer fund-raising drive.

Martin Waligorski explains that the Bentley Priory mansion which housed Fighter Command HQ during the Battle of Britain--including Dowding's own cabinet--may soon be lost to future generations.

Andy Young looks at Khalkhin-Gol: The forgotten battle that shaped WW2.

History and Memory

Norman Geras explains that "there must be different modes, different episodes and details, of remembrance" when remembering Hitler and the Holocaust and other historical tragedies.

Terry Teachout (h/t D.B. Light) hopes Hiroaki Kuromiya's "straightforward" telling of Stalin's Great Terror--The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s--proves to be the rule rather than the exception. Moving along the timeline, Dmitri Minaev discusses the people whose lives were affected by the 1947 USSR decree "On prohibition of marriages between citizens of the USSR and foreigners".

Charles Crawford asks, "Nazism or Communism? Which was 'worse'? And why?"

Agnieszka Szmidel at Historia i Media uses Youtube to present documentaries, comics and short films about how the troubled history of Argentina and Chile affected regular people.

Dave Tabler mines the sources and discovers the worst industrial tragedy in West Virginia history.

Black History Month

Over at Sandusky History, George J. Reynolds, Carriage Maker and Underground Railroad Conductor is discussed. Meanwhile, J. L. Bell looks at how Oscar Marion has been remembered.

Tim Abbott looks at slave-owners in his own family tree in The Tally Sheet of Shame, part of a series of posts about race and memory in America.

Prompted by an email from Melissa Spore, Ralph Luker looks into whether Harriet Tubman really said, "I could have saved thousands-if only I'd been able to convince them they were slaves." If she didn't, well, who did?

Ancient and Medieval

Archaeozoo looks at Red Deer in Early Medieval Ireland. Mmmmm, venison.

Steve Muhlberger is Laughing Along with Cornelius Tacitus. Is a Comedy Central special imminent?

HairySwede discovers that recent archaeological evidence indicates that there were some big-breasted and Sexy Historical Swedes.

Carla Nayland prompts a discussion over whether or not the Picts may have been a matrilineal society.

Mark A. Rayner presents The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Caligula Edition), minus the slides.

Globalization is nothing new as JK's review of The Spicy History of Malabar shows.

Channeling James Burke, Martin Rundkvist explains the connections between amber beads in Jutland, CT scans and The Beatles.

Jonathan Jarrett presents a medieval Irish skeleton in a (possibly) compromising position. Hey, I like mutton as much as the next guy, but....

When good listervs (remember them?) go bad: Michael Drout is frustrated that his favorite Anglo-Saxon listserv has been taken over by people who hold "crackpot theories about the secret messages hidden in Beowulf and other poems through various means involving either scribal practice or numerology." Hey, maybe Grendel was really the original founder of the Illuminati? Is he a Merovingian (ed ~ Um, then they'd have been the Grendelingians....)

Pretty Pictures and the Like

Laurie Bluedorn gives us prose and pictures discussing the artistry of Edwin Landseer. That dog will hunt.

It is in the eye of the beholder, but you've got to at least open your eyes. Neatorama examines The Evolution of Tech Companies' Logos, so you can see for yourself how Nokia lost the fish and the Mozilla Phoenix got Foxy. Meanwhile, GrrlScientist presents a brief history of NY City subway platform tile mosaic artworks.

Nat Taylor looks at a sketch reminiscent of WWII era aircraft nose art and wonders if "The Scrubbed Goose" ever flew. (Avert thy eyes if you're wary of breastesses.)

The Cranky Professor thinks he's found the world's ugliest pulpit. Yech. He just may be right.

Victorian-ish

Over at The Victorian Peeper, Kristan Tetens takes a look at Britain's earliest surviving purpose-built mosque, the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Surrey, which was built in 1889 by a Hungarian-born linguist. Oh, he was Jewish, too.

Does the Society of Creative Anachronism take time out for tea? Tea Party Girl explains that Jane Austen Lived Before the Inventor of the Tea Party.

Dangerous liaisons? Elizabeth Kerri Mahon remembers Evelyn Nesbit and the Murder of the Century while Romeo Vitelli investigates Constance Kent, who could have been a victim, a murderer or even Jack the Ripper.

Melissa Bellanta explains that the contemporary notion that ol' time magicians (like those in the recent movie The Prestige) put the dark back into the ritz and patter runs counter to the evidence that they were really trying to demystify and modernize the "dark arts."

Culture and Society

Tim Lacy says you can learn all you need to know about 19th century sailing by either reading Patrick O'Brian's twenty-book Aubrey/Maturin series or Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s Two Years Before the Mast, but the former is more fun.

Silveral delves into The History of Celebrity and finds that being "larger than life" is a common thread. And who's bigger than St. Valentine? Well, Mary Beard wonders if St. Valentine actually existed, while Jeff Sypeck says he did, which is why we celebrate both his holiday and "Valentimes...a parallel holiday observed by supermodels and the illiterate."

History and Politics

While historians often find studying the past to be intrinsically worthwhile, we also like to use it to try to explain just what the hell is going on now. Thus do history and politics meet (OK, maybe I'm being a bit too obvious with the self-referential plug...how's this...) Here's what's been going on over the last month at the intersection of history and politics (that better?).

Over at Progressive Historian, contributor "midtowng" believes that the S&L Crisis is repeating today and compares it to the S&L crisis of the 1980's .

Jon Swift exclaims Castro Resigns! Sanctions Work!

"It has now been forty years since May '68, and yet we still haven't gotten over it." Greg Afinogenov looks at why.

Jonah Goldberg has certainly generated a conversation with his latest book, Liberal Fascism. Now he explains (and revises) why Obama appears to some as the messiah of a new political religion, for good or ill.

Wretchard uses a Goldberg interview as a jumping off point to explain that liberal fascism and Islamic fundamentalism share common ground with Rousseau's philosophy in that they seek to create heaven on earth. Locke also gets a mention. As Linda Richman would say, "Discuss." And try not to get verklempt.

But back to Obamamania. (Schadenfreude alert!) Sean Wilentz has made a career out of using his curriculum vitae to lend credence to his preferred politics and is no stranger to stirring the pot. Now, Wilentz is being applauded by some (like Taylor Marsh) for his "Race Man" piece, which took on some of the campaign tactics of Barack Obama. But Wilentz may not have been prepared for the reaction he got from some of his heretofore ideological fellow travelers (and others) for taking on the Golden Child of the historo-blogosphere. KC Johnson, Kevin Murphy, Oliver Willis and DnA at Too Sense are just some of those who dragged Wilentz to the woodshed. The beatings continue.

Michael Meckler compares the upbringing of Barack Obama to that of Alexander Hamilton.

Congrats to history blogger / muckraker Josh Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo won the Polk Award for investigative journalism for looking into the Bush Administration's attorney firings last year.

Finally, American conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. passed away and Michelle Malkin, Daniel Larison, Tim Noah and Rick Perlstein are just a few of those--both pundits and the public--who offered thoughts on his impact on American politics and history.

OK, that's a wrap. Hope I kept it interesting. Thanks to all for your contributions and to Sharon for keeping this thing alive. I excluded no submissions that made it to my "Inbox" (except for the spam--I didn't know that a History Carnival was fertile ground for so many investment strategies!). If you didn't get mentioned, well, submit something next time. Or, if you've got a hankering, host one yourself. It's fun!

History Carnival 62 on the way

History Carnival 62 will be up tomorrow. Stay tuned!

O'Sullivan Offers a Conservative Case for Obama

For my money, National Review's John O'Sullivan does a better job explaining the historical reasons for electing Obama than do the Historians for Obama. He does so by assuming that a more unified and stable nation is the bedrock on which American conservatism is built and that and Obama Presidency wouldn't be so bad for conservatives.

A political event is in the conservative interest if it strengthens and stabilizes the country. At times that greater strength may be to the disadvantage of the conservative party or come at some (temporary) cost in conservative principles. But when the smoke of battle clears, conservatives will see, sometimes with surprise, that the nation is better for the change from a conservative standpoint....

It is important not to be starry-eyed about the conservative interest. It is rooted in prudence rather than any more idealistic virtue. It is an amoral basis of calculation, sometime allied with justice, sometimes indifferent to it, but always seeking social stability, as my two American examples will demonstrate.

The first one is the abandonment of Reconstruction after the Civil War in order to reintegrate the south into the United States. That object was achieved but at the cost of the U.S. allowing the installation of Jim Crow laws throughout the south....So the rights of black America were sacrificed for 70 years to the object of reintegrating the south in the federal republic. And whatever we may now think of that bargain, its object was achieved....

My second example is the reversal of the first: namely, the civil-rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. It was clear after the Second World War that the post-Reconstruction bargain was now itself unsustainable. Most Americans, including some in the south, recognized that the black Americans who had served alongside them in the Second World War were denied elementary rights in part of the country that they had fought to defend.... Jim Crow was reversed....

What does the conservative interest indicate on this occasion? It seems possible and even likely that a victory by Barack Obama would be the climax of this long policy of fully integrating black and minority America into the nation and putting the querulous politics of race behind us. As I have argued elsewhere, the mere fact of a President Obama would strengthen and stabilize America just as a Polish pope undermined Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. Black and minority America would be fully integrated into the nation.... Americans would feel better about themselves and the world would feel very differently about America. The conservative interest, as defined above, would therefore smile upon a vote for Obama.

O'Sullivan also explains that actual political work also needs to be done to elect Republican (and Democratic) legislators who will mitigate against some of the executive tendencies of a President Obama that conservatives will disagree with.

Free JSTOR

Manan Ahmed points to both Danah Boyd's decision to publish in only Open Access Journals and Harvard's decision to require that all scholars affiliated with it allow free publication of their work. Thus inspired, he has decided to instigate a "Free JSTOR" campaign. Why? As Manan writes:

One of my biggest complaint about our academic world is about the inaccessibility of research to anyone without institutional affiliation or a hefty bank account. The impact of which is that, academic work in the humanities remains largely confined to a handful of readers and commentators.

I couldn't agree more. As a non-affiliated, "independent" historian, I can't access JSTOR from home because I can't justify paying the single-user fee. Of course, I can do so from one of the many libraries around, but having to take a trip to the stacks sort of takes the spontaneity out of history blogging. Being able to access them online for free, or even a minimal charge, would certainly be better!

Dark Ages, Shmark Ages / Sidonuis, the first neocon?

That popular conceptions of history tend to lag scholarly thought by a couple decades is nothing new. Witness this article in The Independent, "New light on the Dark Ages: Who are you calling barbaric?". For scholars of the period (late antique/earl MA), the discussion is nothing new and the article mentions Gibbon and alludes to "other interpretations." The re-examination was prompted by a new exhibit at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy. Sounds like good stuff. Unfortunately, the author saw fit to characterize the revisionist vs. traditional historiography this way:

But what if the barbarians weren't all that barbaric after all? What if the black/white, good/bad, God's chosen versus axis of evil, neo-conservative type explanation for this historical event is just as much state propaganda as the claim that Saddam Hussein was an hour away from bombarding us all with nuclear missiles?

Pathetic, really. Believe it or not, everything doesn't come back to Bushitler. Does this mean that we can now peg Sidonius Apollinaris as the first neo-con?

Anyway, here's the meat:

... what the new exhibition lays finally to rest is the notion that the barbarians were barbaric. True, they were often blond, worshipped their own gods, lacked cities with sewerage systems, heated floors, bathhouses and aqueducts. Often they were nomads. But the idea that they were in some absolute sense less civilised was Roman state propaganda. Crueller than the Romans? Hardly possible. More violent, more militaristic than the most militaristic state in history? Hard to conceive.

Once one steps back from the paranoid them-and-us, self-and-other way of looking at it, one sees that rather than the cataclysmic end of a great civilisation and its replacement by the forces of darkness, something far more compelling and creative was under way: the creation (as the curators of this exhibition put it) of Europe as we know it, welded together by Christianity, and with deeply rooted memories of Roman heritage which make dramatic returns to our collective consciousness every few hundred years: during the Renaissance, for example.

"The Barbarian kingdoms," writes Jean-Jacques Aillagon in the catalogue, "gradually drew a new political map of Europe, dividing it between the Ostrogoths and the Lombards in Italy, the Franks in western Germany, Belgium and France, the Visigoths in Languedoc, Aquitaine and the Iberian peninsula."

He continues: "If Europe was born in Athens, Jerusalem and Rome, many of its roots also lie in the peoples of the north and east of the European continent." The aim of the exhibition, he writes: "Is to reveal the profound and subtle mix between Graeco-Roman and Germanic roots from which European culture stems."